The traditional model in which a user installs an application on his/her computer and runs it locally is being increasing replaced by “cloud based computing.” In the cloud based model, applications are run from an external computer connected to a user's computer through the internet. Although many applications are still run locally, the cloud based model is quickly becoming more common. One context in which running remote applications is standard practice is social networking. For example, under Facebook and other social networking sites users frequently run remote applications within their online accounts. These applications do not run on the user's computer, but instead on remote computers “in the cloud.” However, although these applications run from remote computers rather than locally, they can still compromise the user's security and privacy, or perform actions that are undesirable to the user.
Conventional computer security systems target malicious applications that attempt to run on a particular computer. At the user level, these security systems can be very effective at detecting and blocking attempts by malicious applications to run on a user's local computer, but provide no protection to the user's local computer against cloud based applications such as those found on social networking sites. More specifically, these conventional security systems are not equipped to detect cloud based applications or to block cloud based applications from adversely affecting the user or the user's computer. Additionally, they lack the ability to categorize cloud based applications as being malicious or benign, or to rate them by reputation. It would be desirable to address these issues.